So we all know how University is programed: all majors at all schools, four careers require degrees but the rest do not, 72 hour semesters, cows, no marriages or babies, unlimited dormies to fill empty rooms, etc.

How do you change that up?

Do you have custom majors? Do you have different careers assigned to the game majors? Do you make doctors and scientists go to university while artists and cult leaders do not? Do you mod the heck out of aging to make a day in university equal a day in the main neighborhood? Do you have more than one school and different schools allow different majors/careers? Admissions requirements? Ban mascots? Main neighborhood university? Something else?


Since University is an ongoing cause of frustration for many of us, I thought it would be fun to talk about how we've changed it from vanilla to suit our games, and maybe pick up some new mod ideas from each other.


I use the three EA universities plus Peni's LGU on my uberhood+. I had a really good division of which careers belonged to each school before LGU came out, which I need to redo.
If a sim wants to go to ALT they must have graduated from private school, be friends with at least three ALT graduates, and have scholarships or family funds totaling . . . I'm going to have to recalculate that, I've lost the notebook! ALT is the private school for rich kids, basically, but some few super ambitious and hard working and very smart middle and lower class kids do get in--Melody Tinker and Lilith Pleasant, looking at you. Motto: it's not just what you know, it's who you know.
For SSU, it was A or B grade, and the general sorts of state university degrees--Letters, Arts, Sciences, Engineering, etc.
LFT was at least a C (lower than that is banned from college per Inteen programing) and majors in tech school sorts of things--gamer (which in my mind is really any IT career), culinary, law enforcement, etc.

I think LGU may take the sciences away from SSU, and have SSU be Arts and Letters.
Or maybe LGU will take the tech school things, and LFT will go to training for playable business employees.

I have Phaenoh's career/major mod so that base game and seasons careers that ought to require degrees actually do.
I have Inteen and Almighty Hat's Proportional Aging and Simsky's 48 hour semester mod so that teens who don't go to college get the same number of days in the main hood between high school and adult hood as their young adult peers get at college.
Inteen of course allows for young adult families as well, so if Dustin and Angela get pregnant and decide to get married in high school, they can up and take their baby to college with them.
I have a mod for badge scholarships by Cyjon that allows teens with silver badges to get college scholarships as well. (This means that getting hired for a playable's business is a better deal than topping a teen career, if, of course, the employer is interested in rotating the teen through different jobs.)
I assign premades by social class to have attended, or not, various universities.

So, taking Lilith Pleasant above, she can attend ALT because she's been working out her anger on her dad's punching bag, she works for Gilbert Jacquet at J'Adore Bakery and has picked up sales, register, and restocking badges, she's become friends with Gilbert and Denise (both ALT graduates) and at least one other ALT grad sim, whom she probably met either at J'Adore or at Gilbert's house. Denise usually teaches Lilith to study and helps her out with academics. My headcannon is that Gilbert is severely dyslexic and thus Denise, being the sort of mom who does, went to bat for her kid, and now goes to bat for all the kids she comes in contact with who need a mom to do that.
Francis Worthington, however, while he should have gone to ALT by his social class, got expelled from private school when he acted out after his parents died, and thus ended up at LFT. If he keeps his nose clean and his grades up, ALT will let him transfer as his whole family went there, after a couple years.

Heh. Heh heh heh.

Read it if you dare.

Which started here.

And there's a downloadable spreadsheet to look at here.

I still haven't actually played out this system to test it all yet, though that's first on my agenda when I get my TS2 mojo back. And most of the ideas are actually pre-college ideas, how to have teens "choose" a major/program, creating entry requirements (AKA making them do stuff so that college-bound teens are more interesting to play) for each major that they have to complete before they can matriculate, etc. And also restructuring so that certain schools (all custom, in my system) offer certain programs. (I mean, technically, all the majors will still be available at all colleges, but the way I'd play it would be that only certain ones will be allowed at each college.) I have even finished building one of the custom universities, namely the "downtown" Arts & Letters one. There are pics here, here, and here .

I use a few custom majors as well as the mod by Phae.

I use semester changes by Cyjon http://cyjon.net/node/116 easier to read that then for me to explain. But anyway the course takes 8 days then I use the 2 vanilla days after graduation to party and stuff.

I leave the cows I think they are funny -most of the time. I even married one in with cool purple eyes and blue hair.

The custom uni that I use by Mootilda made me 8 new dormies. Probably because I used empty templates.

For pregnancy, sims have to have a want to woohoo. I check their inventory for bc. If they have none I roll a dice for pregnancy. Even not pregnant-odd pregnant. I use the sim blender -old school I know but I don't have an interest in the newer mod.

I use only one professor to try and cut down on them.

College adjuster as needed.

To go to uni sim teens need at least 4 scholerships because too many were getting in. Once at uni I play to wants unless the sim is high achieving.

Sims with less scholarships can do college in the main hood.

Once I wake up I am sure to add to this.

iCad, what mod allows for playable classes? Or do you just play those from the professor's side, like Inge's schools?

I'm going to use Sophie-David's "Opportunity Packs" extensively. All of them are "college-accredited," meaning that they increase academic performance when YAs use them. The first one is here: http://www.modthesims.info/d/566690...ccessories.html but there are a bunch of different ones for learning different things on his user account. Aside from that, I want to make skilling count toward grades more than it does in the "vanilla" system. I haven't figured out all the details yet, though.

Oh really, I had no idea they increased the uni meter. I'm sure I have that lectern but hardly use it. This is something I need to look into for the base game college at least. I already have dedicated buildings but only used them for skills. I can see also how one dorm would need to be dedicated to one major because if I take one to a comm lot the others are all stuck in the dorm and then it doesn't work at all. I do have a few dedicated dorms like a hospital dorm and a police academy dorm, but I need more I can see. Love all your ideas icad I just downloaded your sheet.

I play mainly vanilla, but Sophie-David's mods are absolutely essential to my university play these days. I have built them some (not pretty, but working) lecture halls for this purpose. In my big hood, some of my former students come to Uni to teach

My sims do not skill in their dorms (they only have a bookcase and a television set anyway) - they have to go to community lots to skill - which means that graduation always comes almost too soon.So I don't find the period they spend at Uni too long - too much to do.

There are no empty rooms in my dorms, so there are no dormies - I like 6 playables the best, but there is one 4-room, one 5-room and one 7-room dorm in my uni hood for when the numbers don't work out.Since I built them and have them in the lot catalog, I can always plop down another one in case I need one.

The cow is really great for a sim who happens to be attracted to slobs

This is what I am trying to work out though. If I send say one off to an art building no one else can go off to a comm lot so I tend to send them all off but then some have nothing to do there. I'm thinking I will have to group them more by common major. So maybe a general dorm to start with since I don't always know what a sim will study right away and then move likeminded sims into one dorm. Then they go and pair up and want to be together ugh. I love CLT but it makes leaving the lot tricky since any sims left at home are stuck at home until the first one returns.

I will simply have them view the art - somebody has to view their friends' creations. Mine also use the time on those lots where they don't need to do anything to catch up with old friends, meet new somebodies and if all else fails, they play catch Since some of them normally have to go to class as well, it is not a big problem for me.

Of course, occasionally, a sim gets stuck at home. To me, that means that this sim will have a lone outing (or two, or three) until they are all more or less in sync again. One of mine got left behind 3 times (I decided that she most likely did not want to go or she was just less intelligent than I thought). She became very good at fishing and tending bars all over the Uni hood In the end, I was enjoying her outings a little too much, so she became the first one to graduate So I had to send the other 5 out again so that they could graduate before she had to leave

Once in a while a dormie does move in, because there is an empty room after a graduation party - I try to avoid that, but it does happen. Fortunately, dormies go away when you move in a playable (which I try to do in the next rotation). I only had a problem with a dormie staying too long for my liking once - so I made her playable and she was actually a lovely sim I have also moved my playables out and into other dorms if necessary.

I tend to look at these incidents as problems that I can solve. How to do it, when to do it, what to do? To me, it is part of the fun

I assume you're talking about a main-neighborhood campus? Because CLT doesn't work on "real" universities. So, this isn't a problem, so much, with the system I intend to implement, because the campuses will all be actual universities, although they look like regular neighborhoods. I'll be using mods to allow non-Uni Sims on community lots and what-not, so that they're more populated, though the actual classroom buildings will, I think, be Visitor-Controlled to Young Adults. Which I think the VC can do -- though I'm not sure -- and which, if it can, may or may not be a problem with the professors; I'm not sure if the Opportunity Pack lecterns will be able to "call" a non-YA professor to the lot without the VC zapping them away. And if all that doesn't work...Well, then there'll be adult and elder "college students," since I can definitely ban children and teens, at least, from the classroom buildings.... And now that I think about it, having older "students" in the classroom buildings is more realistic, anyway, as these days people often delay going to college for a while or decide to get a degree when they're 70 because they're in good health and bored of being retired. I As I said, I've still got thinking/testing to do.

Anyway, without CLT to worry about, if I have playable Sims living together who are in different programs, I can send one off to do their thing, then send them home when they're done (where it will be the same time they left, which is a problem for them, yes, but I can adjust things where needed), then send the next one off to do their thing, etc. The thing that's going to get messed up, I think, is the semester timer, but I'm fairly certain I'm going to have to turn that off (by resetting the "hours to final exam" on the College Adjuster, if that's the only way I can do it) because I'm thinking that it'll take longer than three days for students to accomplish what they need to do under this system I'm constructing, especially with slower skilling, AND I don't want timed pressure, anyway; it's one of my least-favorite things about vanilla Uni. The trick will be syncing college students' ages with the ages of their non-college siblings and their friends and parents, etc. Which isn't as much of a concern since I play with longer lifespans, which gives you a little more flexibility. Even so, I'll need to track how many days each student is at Uni so that I can adjust their age when they get back to living in a non-Uni neighborhood...though I think I will make a "day" in Uni be shorter in "real time" than a "day" in the non-Uni neighborhood, since I see time in the main neighborhood as more compressed than time in Uni. I'll have to figure out the ratio I want to use. Yay, math.

It doesn't? Lol that shows you how long it's been since I played the actual uni hood. I thought CLT only had issues in BV hoods.
Still, it might be good to try and group similar majors together so they can all leave and come back together because if time doesn't bend I am guessing the uni timer to exams will. I really love that idea of classes being real classes which I could do in the main hood college but can't see that working in the UNI hood since there are no playables adults there to teach- unless they are teleported over.

No, it doesn't work at all. It's like CLT isn't installed when you play a Uni hood. So, you wouldn't necessarily need to group Sims together if you didn't want to. (Though I agree it's a good idea.) But there is one problem: It still gives Sims who leave their home lot a token, and time they spend on community lots accumulates on that token even though it isn't "subtracted" from the home lot. So what happens is, when that Sim moves back to a "regular" hood with CLT in play, the first time you send that Sim to a community lot, it adds all that time from Uni into that first real-hood trip. So, they might not come back for a week. To clear the token, I force-error such as Sim back home at the appropriate time, and then not send them anywhere until after the time when CLT thinks they should have come home. After that, it works as it should. And yes, there are BV glitches, too, though at least it DOES work in vacation hoods, generally speaking. It'll mess things up with the hotels, though.

And yeah, I plan to teleport in (and make temporarily playable) the game-generated professors to do their jobs in the classroom buildings. I won't need all of them, and I won't care if they're the "right" ones, but I figure since they get generated, I might as well use them! I might also have to cheat them some skills and stuff, since being able to be a lecturer has some skill requirements, and I'm not sure if the Uni profs are created with any skills at all. It'll work....I think. Like I said, I've yet to test a lot of this stuff.

I had that! I moved a couple back from uni into her parent's house and took them off to their owned lot and then they didn't come back. After some hours had passed I forced an error on all and made them come back. Now I know why uggh. No Sim loaded obviously does not burn off that token, that's what's needed something to remove it.

The uni prof's themselves, good idea. They are safe but I have no idea what skills they come with. My guess is none. The students probably know more.

Since I have plenty of sims in my big hood, and many of them obviously graduates, the mods pick playables to teach in my game - these sims are called upon to teach.
So my rock god may come to teach creativity, my scientist may teach cleaning and my retired mayor may teach charisma.
The nanny may turn up to teach parenting.
Teaching dancing with the flamingo is a tough one - only one of my sims has qualified to do that.
I always think of them as guest lecturers.

No, NSL doesn't burn the token, so I guess it's not a Sim-loaded one. I would imagine there might be a way to clear the token in SimPE, if you can get to it, but I wouldn't know how to do that, and this isn't enough of an annoyance to me to try to figure it. I just know the "return delay" is going to happen on that first off-lot trip since Uni, so I take care to note when the Sim leaves the community lot so that I know what time to force-error them home on the home lot, and I also note down when the token thought they should come home, so that I know when it's "safe" to send them off-lot again. It's a bit of a pain in the butt, but it's not TOO bad.



Probably! It's not like the professors actually have to do anything in the vanilla game. They're really just a tool one can use to increase their Sim's academic performance in various ways. So I figure making them actually do something would be good, so I'll probably just max out whatever skill(s) they're going to teach and leave it at that. The idea of using skilled Sims from the "normal" neighborhood is a good one, too. It would give a bit of continuity between Uni and the "real" world. I might do that, too, when I have a Sim that would be qualified to teach.

It's kind of cute when a sim turns up and teaches a group of students which includes his own kids too

I love playing uni!

I send my teens to uni and then allow the game to spawn dormies to fill each dorm. I try not to put two playables in the same hall so that they're forced to make friends with the new sims.

I build several additional campus lots - an art building, a theater, a science building, and a lecture hall and so on, and then send sims to the relevant lots for lectures and classes outside of their normal class schedule. I tend to note down their actual classes in their bios so that I remember where they're all supposed to be. This way, they're forced to get the relevant skillpoints and sims aren't just sitting at home getting pregnant (I've learned from experience...) I also use the professors that way @iCad, they really aren't good for anything otherwise, and once I can make them playable I can move them into houses around the hood and they can actually teach and lead useful lives. Some of them spawn quite pretty and I always want to play them and see what they get up to when they're not harassing my students.

I like to make sure there's enough housing around the campus for my professors to move in too it keeps them under control and makes the university hoods feel like real towns! And then, of course, they can fall in love and add babies to my hood which is always a nice plus. But I usually settle them individually unless they have existing relationships with each other. They've been good so far - no one's really fallen for a student!

My non-Uni Unis are a community college brought to me by Squinge's mega college hack which is a contained residential lot the sims live on together with a library, dormitory, lecture halls, hobbies and stuff - it's a great place for sims to 'go to classes' while honing in on their skills. It's like half business/tech type of college. This is the lot I made for it, and I'm having fun so far.

Then sometimes the YA's stay at home with their parents and do online classes, though they disappear to 'class' once a day for two hours so I just pretend they just got tired of being at their parents' house and went out for a mental break.

I like the idea of making the professors playable, @terula8 - and giving them housing in the uni hood too. Except of a sim marrying a prof once, I have never done that - the things you can do in this game just never stop

While I don't use dormies, I never move siblings into the same dorm.

Another thing I use on my campus - my student clubs. I pretend that some of my students belong to these, and since they are allowed to take guests, everyone in the dorm can go. And those not into the hobby can always make the food, grill the hot dogs, write their assignment on the computer on the lot or just hang out with friends. My nature students meet at the nature club and go hiking from there, my film and literature ones discuss film and literature, my music and dance lot perform for the others, etc.

I tend to forget about Pescado's college clock, because I don't use it as a rule - but it has come in handy once or twice.

I have married a prof in but I can't remember what skills or stuff he came with. I do remember that I needed a mod to stop him wearing his old prof suit everywhere as setting every day isn't enough.

My married-in prof had no skills at all. And she also insisted on wearing her prof suit, so I let her be